I find a huge disconnect between the main assertion of this article, and the lip-service paid to most workers. In the article, the author states:
> While a lot of ink has been spilled on the future of work, the majority of Americans, and most people around the world, can’t actually do their jobs remotely.
Ok, so a majority of workers can't do their jobs remotely. Granted, many of these are not anchored to a city (medical offices are in the suburbs, truckers are mobile etc.) but a huge swath of people will still work in cities, at least part time. So this strikes me as another example of tech's myopia and why the tech world is increasingly disconnected from the majority of the country.
Simply put, most people can't work from home. Most people can't afford to buy a house 2 hours away from their office and hope to have the leverage to stay employed. Most people don't make six-figure salaries. Most people are afraid of lay-offs, are afraid of offshoring, are afraid of being antiquated.
And as I have said elsewhere, this almost obsessive focus on remote work could very well be very detrimental to those six-figure salaries and signing bonuses. Why pay USA wages when you can hire a Canadian or Mexican at 75% the cost? We are writing our own obituary and everyone seems to be cheering.
Finally, this is also a step _backwards_ for the environment. In cities like Boston, NYC, SFO etc. most workers commuted on public transit, at least part of the way or lived in dense neighborhoods not owning a car. Now they live in the exurbs and need a car to do anything. Now when they do go into the city they don't take public transit. People didn't stop living, they just moved out of the density and thus became more reliant on ICE vehicles to move about.
Much like the long-term damage of education loss was hard to quantify against the immediate risks of COVID, we will be paying the debt incurred by this almost cultish movement to make remote work the norm.
I am not ready to spend 1.5-2 hours getting tired in a commute every day.
Waiting for an unreliable trainline.
I haven't gotten flu or seasonal sickness since I started WFH.
I have more time to spend with family.
I cook for the family of 4.
I have time to do hobbies.
I have time to workout.
I have time for leisure.
I have time for housework.
I am not tired all the time.
My car is used for errands.
Have you tried lugging in a whole truckload of items on the train? A train/public transit works for work commute, but not for when need to get stuff done. Even in the densest city, I had a car for 10 years. Paid for parking and had a monthly active transit pass. Different things for different purposes. Not to mention, that I walked everywhere I can.
When you can hire someone on the cheap, it becomes a skills market.
You get what you pay for.
> Even in the densest city, I had a car for 10 years.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. I live in the dense downtown of a sprawling urban area and own a car, but it's simply only used for going out on nights and weekends. For most everyday trips I walk or take transit.
OP's point is not that living in a city means you get to or have to give up your car. It's that in many American suburbs, any other mode of getting around for everyday trips - including walking - is simply untenable. Living in a walkable neighborhood with access to good transit gives you the best thing - the option of either public or private transportation. Most of these places, in the US, aren't in the suburbs.
> When you can hire someone on the cheap, it becomes a skills market. You get what you pay for.
You lost the plot in your defense. If skills are equal, and the Mexican can ask for less salary _and enjoy the same quality of life and purchasing power_ (due to the cost of living in their native country) as a 200k/year American dev it isn’t a skills market. It is very much a cost savings market.
And I am sorry but don’t delude yourself, that dev in Mexico or Colombia is just as talented as state-side devs. Couple their talent with the reality that you don’t even need to be a savant to build a SaaS app in JS and you will see that the privilege enjoyed by software engineers in the USA is on life support.
Cogent point. I've worked with outsourced and offshore teams quite a bit.
The attempt to arbitrage lower wages based on geography for highly skilled roles has almost invariably, over any meaningful length of time, run up against increased organizational costs and managerial overhead for all kinds of reasons. You name it.
My general impression is that it tends to work out as a "Rob Peter to pay Paul" kind of scenario - a wash or a net negative.
There are always stories where, when everything went really well for everyone involved, it worked out as an advantage, but those - in my view - are the exception to the rule.
The thing is that they have already done it and it paid off until it didn't. Sure, Microsoft can build an office in Mexico and train, teach, and employ some amazing workers for 25% of the cost. But then HP builds across the street for even less and hires workers from Microsoft for 50% of the cost. Then IBM, Amazon, and Dell do the same.
Now Microsoft has run a training program for IBM Amazon and Dell for the first two years and, next thing you know, you are hiring inexperienced workers with different holidays, employment regulation, time zones, and primary languages to work for the same price as the college graduate in the USA.
International workers will help keep wage costs in the USA down a little. But the talent pool for developing software is still limited. Mexico and many other countries do have some excellent universities, but companies that try to hire there are going to have to contribute to the tech sector of the host country by training and hosting entry level workers. In addition, there will be demand in those countries for the workers you are training.
Finally, if you work in finance, defense, or payments processing you can expect your off-shore, near-shore workers to be limited in what they can do. You may end up having to hire workers specifically for those contracts.
When companies are losing top talent they are forced to allow work from home ? Company ask people to leave who don't like their in office policy. Sure many people will stay but not the talented ones. They just quit to companies who allows Work From Home. Its just a matter of time company which does not allow WFH is filled with mediocre people.
> Why pay USA wages when you can hire a Canadian or Mexican at 75% the cost?
Where are these mythical cheap Canadians and Mexicans just as good as six-figure American talent? Where can I meet them?
We acquired something a while back in Montreal, Canada and it sure wasn't cheap. We actually got most of the team to relocate in the valley on O-1s but still have some guys over there but it's definitely not at 75%!
I mean, it might be different for devs who can't pass the stricter bar for US immigrations, but then you aren't hiring for the same positions anyways...
I'm hoping that offshoreing will lead to better pay and more opportunities in New Zealand. We have some great developers that are all native English speakers and after the exchange rate are cheap to hire.
My experience with offshoring is that the language barrier is far less of a problem than the time zone barrier (hell, we have problems coordinating between east coast and west coast developers even within the united states).
I wouldn’t mind going to the office if the whole team I worked with was on site as well.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t really give much of a shit when I’m the only one in this office while the rest of my team is all over the world. And no I’m not going to cater to their needs when it’s outside of my normal hours. Deal with it, else I will (and have).
Why don’t companies just have local teams that are nodes in the broader graph?
A fully local team in California that works on X, and interacts with team Y that’s based in Singapore, and team Z in Europe.
Each team is self sufficient and works on a piece of the work that can be done by them. In conjunction with the other teams, we get global coverage without having some dumb working hours or waste of an office.
I don’t mind going to the office, and having worked as mainly a product engineer I like whiteboarding with our Product manager and other stakeholders, or getting on calls with customers to demo something (team in the same room, read body language).
Product teams benefit the most being local and all together. It’s hard to build a great product when everyone is not in the same room. Remote might work to make a decent product, but I don’t think you can build something great.
You are describing a typical large global company pre-covid era. Usually your expensive US teams get smaller while Singapore gets larger as you transfer knowledge and move on to another role only to get a call 6 months later when they decide to rehire the US team.
What we have now with a global workforce working together from different timezones has a lot of benefits and some downsides
> Remote might work to make a decent product, but I don't think you can build something great.
This was the most egregious part of this post, for the examples you outline. But I also take issue with the framing that remote workers are remote because they have an issue with coming into the office. As a remote employee of and on both before and after the pandemic, I've never had a problem with being in an office, and fully enjoy quarterly visits for a week.
Working from home, I put in my regular 40 hours, and then another 10-20 after-hours, depending on the week/deadlines/insomnia. But outside of that time, my family is not in a tech city. If I were a bachelor with no children this fact wouldn't matter as much. But as it is, when I go afk and back into my life, I want to be physically planted _where my life is_. It is incredibly uncomplicated.
I like cities, even somewhat big cities, but the megalopolises, I hope all of them to be forgotten in the dustbin of history. There's such a thing as too big IMHO.
I actually only like huge cities, this means most niche doctors and experts are there. Best of the best are there. All big companies and orgs are there.
Lots of jobs can be done remotely. We all know that. But putting together something new and dynamic? You need to meet people. In person. A lot. You need to build relationships. You need to have conversations where you explore ideas and test who the people are who may be vital partners, employees, funding, or whatever down the line. You want to inspire a team? You need to be there.
WFH in NYC gives me the best of all worlds. As an introverts introvert I can work from home during most days. But I have a critical mass of top people to have breakfast,lunch, coffee, drinks, a walk in the park, whatever at my immediate fingertips. I don’t need to schedule a trip and I can be home to see the kids in 5-30 minutes after wrapping up. In many ways it’s the best of all worlds.
Well, yes. Cities must change. How? This article is way over-thinking it though.
Every single one of these office towers has an owner that wants to make a profit. They’ll do it if they can. Class A office buildings will take tenants from Class B towers, who in turn will take tenants from Class C towers. And if the zoning allows it, the Class C buildings will convert to residential. Because people really do like living downtown (even if you or me don’t want to). This is actually what the NYC mayor was talking about as an option but the article either didn’t realize it or decided not to engage with that idea.
Readit News
> While a lot of ink has been spilled on the future of work, the majority of Americans, and most people around the world, can’t actually do their jobs remotely.
Ok, so a majority of workers can't do their jobs remotely. Granted, many of these are not anchored to a city (medical offices are in the suburbs, truckers are mobile etc.) but a huge swath of people will still work in cities, at least part time. So this strikes me as another example of tech's myopia and why the tech world is increasingly disconnected from the majority of the country.
Simply put, most people can't work from home. Most people can't afford to buy a house 2 hours away from their office and hope to have the leverage to stay employed. Most people don't make six-figure salaries. Most people are afraid of lay-offs, are afraid of offshoring, are afraid of being antiquated.
And as I have said elsewhere, this almost obsessive focus on remote work could very well be very detrimental to those six-figure salaries and signing bonuses. Why pay USA wages when you can hire a Canadian or Mexican at 75% the cost? We are writing our own obituary and everyone seems to be cheering.
Finally, this is also a step _backwards_ for the environment. In cities like Boston, NYC, SFO etc. most workers commuted on public transit, at least part of the way or lived in dense neighborhoods not owning a car. Now they live in the exurbs and need a car to do anything. Now when they do go into the city they don't take public transit. People didn't stop living, they just moved out of the density and thus became more reliant on ICE vehicles to move about.
Much like the long-term damage of education loss was hard to quantify against the immediate risks of COVID, we will be paying the debt incurred by this almost cultish movement to make remote work the norm.
Have you tried lugging in a whole truckload of items on the train? A train/public transit works for work commute, but not for when need to get stuff done. Even in the densest city, I had a car for 10 years. Paid for parking and had a monthly active transit pass. Different things for different purposes. Not to mention, that I walked everywhere I can.
When you can hire someone on the cheap, it becomes a skills market. You get what you pay for.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. I live in the dense downtown of a sprawling urban area and own a car, but it's simply only used for going out on nights and weekends. For most everyday trips I walk or take transit.
OP's point is not that living in a city means you get to or have to give up your car. It's that in many American suburbs, any other mode of getting around for everyday trips - including walking - is simply untenable. Living in a walkable neighborhood with access to good transit gives you the best thing - the option of either public or private transportation. Most of these places, in the US, aren't in the suburbs.
You lost the plot in your defense. If skills are equal, and the Mexican can ask for less salary _and enjoy the same quality of life and purchasing power_ (due to the cost of living in their native country) as a 200k/year American dev it isn’t a skills market. It is very much a cost savings market.
And I am sorry but don’t delude yourself, that dev in Mexico or Colombia is just as talented as state-side devs. Couple their talent with the reality that you don’t even need to be a savant to build a SaaS app in JS and you will see that the privilege enjoyed by software engineers in the USA is on life support.
Why hasn't this happened already?
If the workers are equivalent, but much cheaper, surely everyone would do it?
The reality is that outsourcing is never a 1:1 replacement for in-house staff - regardless of where in the world the workers are based.
The attempt to arbitrage lower wages based on geography for highly skilled roles has almost invariably, over any meaningful length of time, run up against increased organizational costs and managerial overhead for all kinds of reasons. You name it.
My general impression is that it tends to work out as a "Rob Peter to pay Paul" kind of scenario - a wash or a net negative.
There are always stories where, when everything went really well for everyone involved, it worked out as an advantage, but those - in my view - are the exception to the rule.
Now Microsoft has run a training program for IBM Amazon and Dell for the first two years and, next thing you know, you are hiring inexperienced workers with different holidays, employment regulation, time zones, and primary languages to work for the same price as the college graduate in the USA.
International workers will help keep wage costs in the USA down a little. But the talent pool for developing software is still limited. Mexico and many other countries do have some excellent universities, but companies that try to hire there are going to have to contribute to the tech sector of the host country by training and hosting entry level workers. In addition, there will be demand in those countries for the workers you are training.
Finally, if you work in finance, defense, or payments processing you can expect your off-shore, near-shore workers to be limited in what they can do. You may end up having to hire workers specifically for those contracts.
Where are these mythical cheap Canadians and Mexicans just as good as six-figure American talent? Where can I meet them?
We acquired something a while back in Montreal, Canada and it sure wasn't cheap. We actually got most of the team to relocate in the valley on O-1s but still have some guys over there but it's definitely not at 75%!
I mean, it might be different for devs who can't pass the stricter bar for US immigrations, but then you aren't hiring for the same positions anyways...
Well, they're not cheap any longer! You can meet them in America.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t really give much of a shit when I’m the only one in this office while the rest of my team is all over the world. And no I’m not going to cater to their needs when it’s outside of my normal hours. Deal with it, else I will (and have).
Why don’t companies just have local teams that are nodes in the broader graph?
A fully local team in California that works on X, and interacts with team Y that’s based in Singapore, and team Z in Europe.
Each team is self sufficient and works on a piece of the work that can be done by them. In conjunction with the other teams, we get global coverage without having some dumb working hours or waste of an office.
I don’t mind going to the office, and having worked as mainly a product engineer I like whiteboarding with our Product manager and other stakeholders, or getting on calls with customers to demo something (team in the same room, read body language).
Product teams benefit the most being local and all together. It’s hard to build a great product when everyone is not in the same room. Remote might work to make a decent product, but I don’t think you can build something great.
What we have now with a global workforce working together from different timezones has a lot of benefits and some downsides
Gitlab, Automaticc, Cockroach Labs...So many companies dispute this point.
The open source Linux team is fully remote for christs sake.
Meanwhile Microsoft is office based.
It seems to me the opposite of what you're saying is true.
Remote companies make great products, office companies make average products.
This was the most egregious part of this post, for the examples you outline. But I also take issue with the framing that remote workers are remote because they have an issue with coming into the office. As a remote employee of and on both before and after the pandemic, I've never had a problem with being in an office, and fully enjoy quarterly visits for a week.
Working from home, I put in my regular 40 hours, and then another 10-20 after-hours, depending on the week/deadlines/insomnia. But outside of that time, my family is not in a tech city. If I were a bachelor with no children this fact wouldn't matter as much. But as it is, when I go afk and back into my life, I want to be physically planted _where my life is_. It is incredibly uncomplicated.
Of course, 100% office based too.
WFH in NYC gives me the best of all worlds. As an introverts introvert I can work from home during most days. But I have a critical mass of top people to have breakfast,lunch, coffee, drinks, a walk in the park, whatever at my immediate fingertips. I don’t need to schedule a trip and I can be home to see the kids in 5-30 minutes after wrapping up. In many ways it’s the best of all worlds.
Not planning to go back to a major city unless remote work takes a full shift back to office.
Executive summary: Cities must change. Sherlock.
Every single one of these office towers has an owner that wants to make a profit. They’ll do it if they can. Class A office buildings will take tenants from Class B towers, who in turn will take tenants from Class C towers. And if the zoning allows it, the Class C buildings will convert to residential. Because people really do like living downtown (even if you or me don’t want to). This is actually what the NYC mayor was talking about as an option but the article either didn’t realize it or decided not to engage with that idea.
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